Bonus: James Robison:
I like short stories. Novels. Screenplays. Very good poems. Why do [I] write? To quote Donald Barthelme: ‘It is the most interesting and difficult thing one can do.’
Bonus bonus: A fantastic short story by James Robison.
Now that we have a dog and I walk it everyday I’ve come to think that having a dog is good for community building. I know the streets of our neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods far better and I’ve met many fellow citizens I probably would have never met. It’s a good check against my tendency toward alienation.
I’ve started to pay much more attention to scribbles in the sidwalk. Sometimes the markings people leave behind are ephemeral:
And there’s plenty of “I was here” messaging:
And sometimes it gets a little weird:
My favorite is when kids are clearly involved:
In fact, I think it’d be cool if when new sidewalks are poured city workers encourage neighborhood children to scribble on select sidewalk tiles. So long as nobody uses profanity or scribbles hateful messages, it can only enhance the feeling of community.
He’s 7 months old now. I’m told basenjis are pretty much done growing at 8 months, so maybe he’s got another inch in him. I was proud of him yesterday–we walked 32 blocks in the late afternoon heat. It was the first time we’d ever made it all the way to Tchoupitoulas Street. I dutifully kept him well hydrated.
A short story of mine has been selected as a finalist in the 2010 Faulkner-Wisdom short story competition. I guess that means I should stop revising it now and start writing something new. The winner will be announced in late September. Dedra’s novel was chosen as 2nd runner up in 2006.
Here’s the lead story at Politico right now:
My question: Why is Shirley Sherrod’s picture so large and centered amidst such an array of esteemed rage artists? Certainly she would be justified if she felt rage these days, but she’s not hardly a rager like Joe Wilson and Andrew Breitbart. I’m not sure I’d even characterize Alan Grayson as a rager, but I get why he’s included–he says mean or exceedingly uncharitable things about Republicans and Politico had to include at least one Democrat. Likewise, Tucker Carlson is more a dick than a rager. The article’s authors present Politico as an unwitting witness to right/left wing rage:
as a nonpartisan news site, we face relentless attacks from the right and left, all looking for signs of bias.
I’m not accusing Politico of bias. I just think Politico is frequently lame and superficial. Who benefits from such lame superficiality? Politico, mostly. But I also think bamboozlers benefit because Politico is a leader in creating false equivalences (as well as draining policy questions of their content through an obsession on process), which helps bamboozlers like Breitbart have so much currency. Why does Politico do it? At heart, Politico writers are party planners.
Over at Nola.com’s “comment of the day,” veganola argues a vegan diet can teach children about social justice. Okay, so veganola probably isn’t being especially fair when s/he suggests the chicken and cow industrial complex leads to a
a system which feeds [children] carcinogenic, diabetes and stroke causing food, so that they can become fodder for a medical system determined to hook them an expensive medications instead of encouraging a good diet.
It’s not automatic a diet that includes animal products leads to all these bad things. But the comments that follow (I know, not surprisingly) are a parade of ignorance about veganism. This one by mjzapjr is pretty representative:
Vegan? Yeah, here kids, eat these plants and take these 48 vitamins to fill the big whole [sic] in your daily values.
How about teaching kids to make healthy choices instead of cramming crap down their throats?
Leaving aside the misinformation about “the big whole” veganism would leave in one’s “daily values,” what’s with the contemporary obsession with having ____________ crammed down one’s throat? I guess we’re all Foie gras, eh?
I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that “crap” isn’t vegan.
GOOD has a nice article about the role of bloggers in post-federal flood New Orleans, but I thought its article about New Orleans public schools was weak. First there’s the false framing:
The school buildings going up in New Orleans are part of the largest federal investment in school construction since the Civil War. But physical structures aren’t the only things being radically upended. New Orleans is now the only U.S. city in which a majority of students attend a charter school. As both projects move forward, we may soon find out if a city can be remade through its schools.
As if spinning off most public schools into charters is the only way for a city to determine “if [it] can be remade through its schools.” The article’s author takes at face value that charters = educational reform.
Then there’s this:
New Orleans is in the midst of the most ambitious system-wide reform in U.S. education history. So far, the laboratory is yielding impressive results—in four years, the percentage of failing schools has been reduced by half—but there is still, by all accounts, a long way to go.
The metrics here being used to determine success are accepted apparently without a second thought. I’m willing to bet in years to come the assessment data will be shown to be seriously flawed.
HuffPo is top-paging this wonderful C-SPAN footage of oil gusher commission testimony in New Orleans, which is a striking improvement over some other schlock they’ve promoted on the subject.
When you’re taking an exam and you find a question difficult, whine to the teacher, “You’re not supposed to put any gotcha questions on this test!”
A hot new book by a trio of cutting edge Republican Congressmen aged 40, 45, and 47 years old is called Young Guns (sub-title: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders). Woo-hoo! I’m right at the median of the Young Gun age range!
[Note: The above image of course isn't me--that's Grecian Formula model Young Gun Rep. Kevin McCarthy. ]
